prodigy critically, we find it no prodigy at all, much less a
miracle. It is not necessary to suppose a moral new birth of humanity,
or a wholesale destruction of the wicked and survival of the good, to
account for the fact before us. It finds its simple and obvious
explanation in the reaction of a changed environment upon human nature.
It means merely that a form of society which was founded on the pseudo
self-interest of selfishness, and appealed solely to the anti-social
and brutal side of human nature, has been replaced by institutions
based on the true self-interest of a rational unselfishness, and
appealing to the social and generous instincts of men.

"My friends, if you would see men again the beasts of prey they seemed
in the nineteenth century, all you have to do is to restore the old
social and industrial system, which taught them to view their natural
prey in their fellow-men, and find their gain in the loss of others. No
doubt it seems to you that no necessity, however dire, would have
tempted you to subsist on what superior skill or strength enabled you
to wrest from others equally needy. But suppose it were not merely your
own life that you were responsible for. I know well that there must
have been many a man among our ancestors who, if it had been merely a
question of his own life, would sooner have given it up than nourished
it by bread snatched from others. But this he was not permitted to do.
He had dear lives dependent on him. Men loved women in those days, as
now. God knows how they dared be fathers, but they had babies as sweet,
no doubt, to them as ours to us, whom they must feed, clothe, educate.
The gentlest creatures are fierce when they have young to provide for,
and in that wolfish society the struggle for bread borrowed a peculiar
desperation from the tenderest sentiments. For the sake of those
dependent on him, a man might not choose, but must plunge into the foul
fight--cheat, overreach, supplant, defraud, buy below worth and sell
above, break down the business by which his neighbor fed his young
ones, tempt men to buy what they ought not and to sell what they should
not, grind his laborers, sweat his debtors, cozen his creditors. Though
a man sought it carefully with tears, it was hard to find a way in
which he could earn a living and provide for his family except by
pressing in before some weaker rival and taking the food from his
mouth. Even the ministers of religion were not exempt fro